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Messier 66 NGC 3627
Imaged by Martin S. Ferlito copyright
Gstar-EX Integrating Video Camera
Information provided by seds.org
Discovered 1780 by Charles Messier.
Messier 66 (M66, NGC 3627), together with its neighbors M65 and NGC 3628,
forms a most conspicuous triplet of galaxies, the Leo Triplet or M66 group,
located at a distance of about 35 million light years.
M66 is considerably larger than its neighbor, M65, and has a well developed
but not well defined central bulge, and is therefore classified Sb. Obviously
its spiral arms are deformed, probably because of the encounters with its
neighbors. They seem to be distorted and displaced above the plane of the
galaxy. Note how one of the spiral arms seems to pass over the left side of the
central bulge. Much dust is visible here, as well as a few signs of star
formation, near the end of one of the arms.
Together with its neighbor M65, M66 has been discovered by Charles Messier,
who cataloged it on March 1, 1780, remarks that he missed these two objects in
1773, when a comet passed between them on November 1 to 2, 1773, probably
because of the light of the comet. Because of a dubious error, Admiral Smyth
has assigned this discovery of M65 and M66 (and M68) to Pierre Méchain, a view
which was adopted by Kenneth Glyn Jones somewhen in the 1960s, and
consequently, in many modern sources, despite the fact that Messier doesn't
acknowledge such a prior sighting, which he did in all other cases.Four supernovae have appeared in this galaxy:
